


you're

by lances



Series: write in blood or don't bother [2]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Introspection, Love Confessions, M/M, Overthinking, Post-Canon, Romantic Angst, deeper look at their relationship, flowery writing be warned, kuroro needs to get out of his own head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 20:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lances/pseuds/lances
Summary: “I exhaust myself, but I’ve also learned to love myself.”“Have you?”Kurapika laughed, wry. “Maybe not.”But I’ve learned to love you, went unsaid,and isn’t that all that matters?(or: kuroro was never scared of losing stolen things; earned things were different.)





	you're

**Author's Note:**

> the clown's back in town [@itsillumi](https://itsillumi.tumblr.com/)

Kuroro woke up to a silent sun, gentle on both eyes and mind. It was a miracle in its own right, catering the elegiac sort of peace he never dared take comfort in. Light rose past ivory drapes like shed stardust, the quiet rooting his limbs in place; it felt as though a single shift of the knee or hip could shatter the moment, and for a man starved for peace, Kuroro refused to let that happen.

Having enemies made caution religion, not insurance—it kept him used to drumming heartbeats, to looseleaf bouts of sleep. Kuroro’s reality wasn’t waking up to warmth and security so much as it had been the scent of cyanide that never left his clothes and the choking pulse of adrenaline.

Closing his eyes again, Kuroro accepted a body without tension.

_Here’s to freedom._

A soft puff of breath, unhurried and rested against his breastbone, had Kuroro opening his eyes again. The smile invited itself; Kurapika was a comfort, too—someone who’d shown him the unsavory side of himself, gone for broke on brutality, and kissed Kuroro with the same sharp tongue he cut him with. Even then, with a blonde fringe dipping into his own bare collar, Kuroro couldn’t help the rush of warmth folding upward from gut to heart to throat.

Second chances didn’t exist, but acceptance did. Understanding, no matter how rare a currency it was, _existed_ and Kurapika was fond of dealing in it.

 _You’re—unreal,_ Kuroro’s palm cupped his shoulder, hiding the freckled sumac-spiced skin as he brought Kurapika closer. He smelt like the carved inside of a honeycomb, a viscid scent that had Kuroro’s nose burrowing into the crown of his head.

“You’re feeling awfully affectionate.”

Kuroro brushed his lips against hair in a non-kiss. “I am.”

“How rare,” Kurapika didn’t shift, his voice heavy along Kuroro’s skin, scratched with sleep. “Should I celebrate?”

“You should kiss me.”

It took a moment of silence for Kuroro to register the quiet rise and fall of Kurapika’s back, to class it as a laugh too tired to voice. Kurapika was always too tired to laugh. Kuroro knew better than to romanticize what they had, no matter how sweet the sin. He knew misery when he saw it—in the bathroom mirror, in the purse of Kurapika’s lips, in the trembling hold on cutlery; they were both too intimate with grief to miss how Kurapika’s body hid itself into his side. 

Laugh or no laugh, Kuroro knew his lover.

_And I know I can’t make you happy._

No matter how much Kuroro fought himself to label them as victims of fate, fools of circumstance, the looming reality of who they were never really left the room—not when they argued, and not when they kissed. Whether he liked it or not, and whether Kurapika accepted him for it or not, Kuroro was a villain. Ungodly, unforgiven and unforgotten as one of their world’s most infamous monsters.

Not killer, not thief.

Monster.

The title was up for grabs, in the eyes of Kurapika’s doctor friend and the vault of Illumi’s disgusted lip and the spartan nature of their room. They came from two worlds rich in culture, if nothing else, and yet none of that made it into their lives now. No part of their homes came home with them. Unlike the limitlessness of Lukso or Meteor City, home here felt temporary. Fragile. The war might have been over—the Whale sunk, the Spiders dead, the Kurta buried—but Kuroro couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t worse.

 _The idle mind, they say,_ he swallowed, trying to absorb whatever amusement Kurapika left behind. “Laugh louder.”

Kurapika snorted, the undignified sound very unlike him. He’d never let it happen if he weren’t a slave to sleep. “Keep quiet.”

Kuroro took the jab in stride, features stoic. “I’m a man of few words as is.”

“And believe me,” Kurapika propped his chin up against Kuroro’s chest, brown eyes lined with the burnt yellow of sun-bitten lashes, “the world is better for it.”

 _It’s a joke,_ he had to remind himself that the dull ache in his throat was nothing but love borne sensitivity. This wasn’t him, this wasn’t the way he thought, not now or ever; Kurapika just had a way about him. Brought to ruin any semblance of control in Kuroro, and Kuroro couldn’t hate him for it. Wouldn’t dare try, either.

There was no hating Kurapika, even with the warmth of Uvo’s heart still in his hands.

“You’re right,” he found himself saying, his voice a plateau free of emotional hitch. Kurapika _was_ right. Kuroro didn’t think the world would be more peaceful without him, not with how greed-driven human beings tended to be, but he’d caused his fair share of civil bloodshed. His was more a statement of fact than it was acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

And that was good enough.

Kurapika caught on without a missed beat, body bracing itself on an elbow so his eyes could narrow down into Kuroro’s. “You’re acting weird.”

“Me? Hardly.” Kuroro looked past his face into the sun flare crowning the ceiling. “Just being candid.”

“More like getting in your head.”

After a second or so of chaste quiet, Kuroro met his eyes with relent. “Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Kurapika repeated, a sigh hanging off the word. He dropped himself back to Kuroro’s side, and Kuroro couldn’t be more thankful for the lack of stare if he tried. Kurapika’s eyes, he realized, burnt holier brown than they did red. There was something far more terrifying about them unlit, something sober and analytical and trench-like. Brown broke them open like red never could.

And Kuroro wasn’t sure what that referred to, their relationship or Kurapika’s irises.

“I know,” Kuroro’s response was meaningless, but apologies weren’t cataloged anywhere in his damn personality, even when Kurapika deserved it. He couldn’t even apologize for the fact he couldn’t apologize, and if that wasn’t the most warped reality that sat between them, Kuroro didn’t know what was. “I know it exhausts you.”

“You exhaust me.”

“I know.”

“But I exhaust myself, too.”

Kuroro blinked, looking down at Kurapika. The other had settled against his chest again, staring off into a corner of the room, unseeing. Nothing about it sounded frustrated, as far as Kuroro could tell, just a peaceful confession that was more than welcome in the silence. “I exhaust myself, but I’ve also learned to love myself.”

“Have you?”

Kurapika laughed, wry. “Maybe not.”

 _But I’ve learned to love you,_ went unsaid, _and isn’t that all that matters?_

“You’re—” _naive, stupid, too kind, too forgiving_ “—strange.”

Kurapika chuffed a sweet laugh. “I’ve fallen.”

The simplicity of it had Kuroro breathing a little shallower, the sound foreign in the best way possible; this was to have a god in love with him. To have amber skin warm his own, to feel the satin stain of affection tucked between cotton and bare bodies.

It was to _have_ Kurapika. 

Kuroro had never feared losing something he stole, and maybe it was because he stole it; he’d never earned something before and maybe that’s why it terrified him.  _What’ve you done to me?_ Kuroro’s jaw stiffened at the thought, but in a monotone too flat for a love admission, he answered his own question. “Me too.”

_I’ve fallen—_

Kurapika dropped a kiss to his throat, pomegranate lips full. “I know.”

_—and you’re cosmic._

**Author's Note:**

> will she ever write krpka's pov or involve more than one setting or not be a pretentious jackass? 
> 
> jury's out and wasted on me


End file.
